FCP Movie into PowerPoint–Need Advice

[Zane Barker]

Try using a h264 file, but if you do make sure her PC has the most up to date version of quicktime.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[David Bogie]

Powerpoint totally blows, even for a Microsoft product it blows. Our PP guy is actually certified by MS and he can’t get PP to run embedded movies predictably.

PP tries to capture all of the prezo’s resources within the ppt file. If you add a 10 meg movie, what might have been a 500kb ppt file is not 10.5M. So your playback machine has to have the horsepower not only to run the WMV and PP but to load the stupid file into RAM or to be able to cache it.

It’s a nightmare. We have spent hours on the MS help forums for Powerpoint and we have never found a viable solution.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[John Fishback]

I’ve been forced to use PPT with video a couple of times and it’s as frustrating process. However, if you can play the video in WindowsMedia Player, it should be playable inside PPT. You have to have the video in the same folder as t he PPT file. Explain what you’re seeing in PPT – white screen, black screen, etc. What version are you using?

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.4 QT7.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Mark Suszko]

John makes a vital point, not only all your video and sounds but your fonts need to be in the same one folder so PPT can find them. There’s a “make self-contained” feature you need to check when building the final presentation. Check the help files for more.

The video format that is guaranteed to work embedded into PPT is Mpeg 1, but it looks like, well, you know. Mpeg 2 is a little better, but depends a lot on the horsepower of the machine that will run it.

I expect you’re needing to do some driver and plug-in upgrades on her laptop for this to be more reliable, as well. If you’re lucky, you won’t need to add RAM, but you might need to defrag the laptop’s HD and make enough contiguous space on it for the video files to play well. Everything has to play off the C drive generally. Don;t expect to be able to play this off a CD, you’ll need to transfer it to the actual C drive to run well.

The other alternative I can think of is to have to jump out of PPT to play the video files, then back into PPT for the slides.

One other non-intuitive way to go would be to do the entire process backwards, so to speak, and make the whole thing a DVD with each PPT slide/still a looping chapter of it’s own, so she can still control everything like a slide show, but the chapters with motion video play normally, and this should work on any computer that can play a DVD or a $30 player and remote you buy from the corner Walgreen’s, for that matter. Myself, I’d much rather make the DVD and know it’s solid wherever and whenever, than try to debug the ppt with video links in it.

[Dave Mehrman]

Let me just start by saying how much i hate PPT and getting videos to play back reliable is so frustrating; however, i think i have found a solution that seems to work.

I create powerpoints with WMVs embedded all the time and this is what i do to ensure my clients can play them back.

My first question is what versions of powerpoint are you using. Older versions don’t play as well with video as some of the newer versions, i.e. Office 2007 or even 2003 (2008 or 2004 mac versions).

Any version earlier than 2003 has issues with video playback, they work, but not as well as 2003 and later. I have had videos that play fine in Window Media Player but just come up as a white screen with audio playing back when in powerpoint. So your playback issue might have nothing to do with your video file but your PPT version.

Now, once you get that PPT together and the video is playing back, I highly recommend you burn the whole presentation to a CD using the burn to CD export function. That will consolidate the presentation and videos to one folder on the disc and ensure the links will stay.

Depending on your compression settings, the video might playback fine from the CD (i will typically compress my video to a bit rate that will allow playback from the disc). If it does not, you can then copy the contents of the disc to a folder on the computer, and the project will be all together in a nice neat package and the links should all be ok.

hopefully that helps out.

dave mehrman

[Mike Raff]

Thanks for the response, John–and everybody else, too.

I’m seeing a white screen. And you’re right, the video is in a different folder than the PPT file.

As for the version, it appears to be Office 2003.

What does all that suggest?

Thanks in advance.

Mike Raff
Richmond, VA

[Zane Barker]

[Dave Mehrman] “Let me just start by saying how much i hate PPT and getting videos to play back reliable is so frustrating; however, i think i have found a solution that seems to work. “

Yea powerpoint has some big issues with video.

Because you are editing in FCP that tells me you have a mac. Do you have Keynote on that mac. Keynote it by far the BEST presentation software I have ever used. If you have keynote open the PPT file with it (yes keynote can open and save PPT files). if your wife is unable to use keynote for the presentation then I would still use keynote to create it and then export a quicktime that will stop on each slide and only continue once you press play again.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[John Fishback]

This is from memory – I think white screens may be the result of too long a path name. Here’s a great site with answers to many PPT issues. https://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?lang=en&cr=US&dg=microsoft.public.powerpoint

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.4 QT7.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Mike Raff]

I have a Mac, my wife has a PC, we have no idea on what machine the presentation will be played back–best to assume it will be a PC.

I do not have Keynote on my Mac, but I do have Power Point 2008 for Mac. Do you think we could transfer the .ppt file from her PC, along with her assets, and open the presentation in my Mac and work with QT movies without converting them to WMVs?

Mike Raff

[Wayne Dupuis]

To reiterate… copy all source files to a (USB) memory stick putting all files in the same folder. Sounds as simple as cleaning the cables doesn’t it? DO it. When you save the PPP, save to the same folder. Run the presentation from the stick. This should work for you.